Mythologies of the Munduruku Tribe

The Munduruku, also known as Mundurucu or Wuy Jugu, are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the Amazon River basin. Some Munduruku communities are part of the Coatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land. They had an estimated population in 2014 of 13,755. Traditionally the Munduruku's territory, called Mundurukânia in the 19th century, was the Tapajós river valley. In 1788, they completely defeated their ancient enemies the Muras. After 1803 they lived at peace with the Brazilians. The Munduruku live in southwest of the state of Pará along the Tapajós river and its tributaries in the municipalities of Santarém, Itaituba and Jacareacanga, in the east of the state of Amazonas along the Canumã River in the municipality of Nova Olinda and the municipality of Borba, and in the north of the state of Mato Grosso in the Peixes River region in the municipality of Juara. They usually inhabit forest regions on the margins of navigable rivers, and their traditional villages are in "Tapajós fields", patches of savannah within the Amazon rainforest. The largest numbers live in the Munduruku Indigenous Territory, with most of the villages along the Cururu River, a tributary of the Tapajós. Today the Munduruku face threats to their homelands from the dams of the Tapajós hydroelectric complex, illegal gold-panning, and a new waterway construction on the Tapajós River. The reservoir of the proposed Chacorão Dam on the Tapajós river would flood 18,700 hectares (46,000 acres) of the Munduruku Indigenous Territory. The reservoir of the proposed São Luiz do Tapajós Dam on the Tapajós would flood about 7% of the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Territory.

Mundurukú, South American Indian people of the Amazon tropical forest. The Mundurukú speak a language of the Tupian group. They inhabit the southwestern part of the state of Pará and the southeastern corner of the state of Amazonas, Brazil. Formerly, they were an aggressive, warlike tribe that expanded along the Tapajós River and its environs and were widely feared by neighbouring tribes. By the beginning of the 19th century, Brazilian colonists had pacified the Mundurukú and annexed their territory. The Mundurukú economy was that of the tropical forest: a combination of farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Men were warriors, hunters, and fishermen, leaving cultivation to the women. The men lived in a separate house, visiting their family dwellings for brief intervals. The modern Mundurukú population has made a livelihood of collecting latex from wild rubber trees and exchanging it for manufactured goods. Their dependence on the Brazilian economy has led to the transformation of Mundurukú life. Most of the old village institutions are now practically extinct, and families, living in isolation with their rubber trees, are related to each other through the trading post. Only their isolation in the Amazon forest has prevented them from becoming assimilated into Brazilian life.

Historically a people with a warrior tradition, the Munduruku culturally dominated the region of the Valley of the Tapajós River, which, in the early times of contact and during the 19th Century was known as Mundurukânia. Today, the wars they wage are to guarantee the integrity of their territory, threatened by pressures from the illegal activities of gold-panning, hydroelectric projects, and the construction of a great waterway on the Tapajós. This indigenous group belongs to the Munduruku language family, a branch of the Tupi trunk. Their self-designation is Wuy jugu and, according to the traditions transmitted orally among several elders, the name Munduruku, as they have been known since the end of the 18th Century, was how they were called by the Parintintins, an enemy people located in the region between the right bank of the Tapajós and the Madeira rivers. This name was supposed to have meant “red ants”, alluding to the way the Munduruku attacked rival territories en masse. The socio-linguistic situation of the Munduruku is quite diversified, as the result of different moments in the history of contact with the colonization frontier, and the fact of their dispersal in different geographical spaces. Most of the population located in the small villages on the banks of the Tapajós is bilingual. In the village of Sai Cinza, villages of the Cururu, Kabitutu rivers and other tributaries of the Tapajós, the children, women and elderly speak only the maternal language most of the time. There are also cases which occur where the Munduruku language goes through a process of disuse, when Portuguese is used almost exclusively, with children and young people who do not speak Munduruku fluently, for example, the villages of Mangue and Indian Beach, located on the outskirts of the city of Itaituba, and in the communities of the Coatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land, in the state of Amazonas.

The Mundurucu live just south of the equator in the Brazilian states of Para and Amazonas. They were known in early Brazilian history as warriors who took enemy heads as trophies. There are two separate groups of Mundurucu, who live in the basins of two major tributaries of the Amazon, the Tapajós and Madeira rivers. There appears to have been little, if any, contact between the two groups since the 1880s. The discussion here refers only to the Río Tapajós group. The climate is characterized by a rainy season (December to April) and a dry season (May to November). Linguists generally classify the Mundurucu language as Tupían in origin. Most of the men and a lesser number of women also speak Brazilian Portuguese. In 1980, some 1,100 to 1,250 Mundurucu lived on their reservation, which is a botanical preserve about half the size of New Jersey. Much of this land is savanna that is not arable.

The Munduruku, also known as Munduruku, Weidyenye, Paiquize, Pari, Maytapu and Caras-Pretas, and self-denominated Wuyjuyu or Wuy jugu, are a Brazilian indigenous group inhabiting the indigenous areas Cayabi, Munduruku, Munduruku II, Praia do Índio, Mangue Beach and Sai-Cinza, in the southwest of the state of Pará; the indigenous lands Coatá-Laranjal and São José do Cipó, in the eastern state of Amazonas; and the Apiaká-Kayabi Indigenous Reserve in the western state of Mato Grosso. They have a population of 11,630 (National Health Foundation, 2010) or more individuals, distributed in about thirty villages. They speak the Mundurucu language, which belongs to the Mundurucu linguistic family and the Tupi linguistic trunk. The name “mundurucu” is the name with which a rival group of mundurucus, the parintintins, denominate them. It means “red ants” and is a reference to the mass attack that the mundurucus used to carry out on their enemies. The Mundurucu Indians have a particular numerical system. Pierre Pica, along with Stanislas Dehaene and Elizabeth Spelke, developed a seminal work with the mundurucus revealing the psychophysical and linguistic properties of the mundurucu counting system. Mundurucus only have words for numbers up to five. Despite this, they are able to perform several arithmetic operations roughly with similarity to that of Western individuals who received formal mathematics education.